My daughter has started seventh grade. For those who haven’t been reading my blog posts for the past year and a half, that’s the grade my son was in when he ended his life.
He was also thirteen; an October baby, so we didn’t start him in kindergarten until he was five turning six. My daughter, on the other end of the spectrum, is a summer baby, so she’s twelve, won’t be thirteen until a couple weeks after she’s finished seventh grade.
Which means I get to stress out and worry she’ll do the same thing for two years, not one.
I mean, I know I shouldn’t be worried. I’ve said it before and it bears repeating: She is not him. Whereas his glass was perpetually half empty and steadily leaking, hers is overflowing. Whereas he was almost constantly miserable with life, she embraces life, loves to be happy.
She’s not him.
Of course, as I’m the mother of a deceased child; forced to figure out how to raise the other one despite the dredges of grief that permeate our lives, I can tell myself that all day long (and I do), but it doesn’t really matter. I will still worry. I mean, it’s a mother’s nature to worry even without such a tragedy smacking me upside the head.
So far I’m good today, though. I dropped her off a short while ago, and I’m sitting on my back porch, drinking my coffee, feeling that eternal guilt because I didn’t stop by to visit my son’s grave after leaving the school. But the thing is, I wasn’t crying. I didn’t feel sad. In fact, I was excited for my daughter to go back to school. Yesterday she was chatting on the phone with one of her school chums and I could hear the excitement in her voice. She couldn’t wait to hang out with her buds again.
And I didn’t want to ruin my own tentative happiness by deliberately seeking out the reminder of my devastating loss.
So I came home. And now I’m hanging out with the dog, going to add some words to my latest work-in-progress. And later this afternoon, I’ll go pick up the kid, listen to her stories about school, about her friends, about the plans and goals for this upcoming year. I’m going to focus on the living, on the child who’s still here.
And breathe a very large sigh of relief that her glass is still far more than half full.
Tami Lund is an author, an award winner, a wine drinker, and a grieving mother. Blogging helps with the grieving process, so thanks for reading.
I lost a son too. He was 20 in 1991, pushed off a building and I held him for 3 days as he died. I can say that the whole in your soul closes a little each day, after 5 years you start to feel emotions again, after 15 years you can cope with not thinking of them every day, but you know you can never stop the feeling that you cannot cope with loss of another child. It’s ok to grieve, it’s ok to talk about them, the tears we cry is the price for loving.
I’m so sorry you had to go through this, Robin. Thank you for sharing your story and especially for your words of encouragement.